mixed messages…

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work

The official Olympics 2012 logo is as disappointing as the choice of official sponsors. The disjointed looking piece of Flash breaks a number of accessibility guidelines and resembles something falling apart rather than being in any way memorable, reproducible or having an association with health and fitness.  Which leads onto the sponsors who include Cadburys (should that now be Kraft?) Coca Cola and Macdonalds. High-sugar, high-fat, processed food and drink; the antithesis of what our government is currently advocating as ‘healthy’ eating. The modern Olympics aim to promote the ‘practice of sport and the joy found in effort.’  In 21st century-speak this could translate as the promotion of healthy lifestyles. Quite where the McDonalds fast food ethos fits into this is not overtly clear. Even more bizarrely is the official Olympic rule of allowing no advertising when the organisers can appoint official sponsors, to generate income to help with the ‘costs of running an Olympic Games and promoting the Olympic message’ (ibid) In 2012 the message seems to be ‘additives and junk food are ok’. How this blatant promotion differs from advertising of products is unclear. Another recent expose of the ‘food’ industry is Ingreedients  which follows in the footsteps of Fast Food Nation,   SuperSize Me  and Food Inc. The advertising for Ingreedients says ‘This DVD contains the information to live a healthy life but the choice is yours!’ a message the Olympics 2012 should be taking the opportunity to promote rather than associating with the multinational junk food companies who have a vested interest in profits rather than children’s health.

Twice in one day

Sue Watling / / digital exclusion 2010

Examples of the invisibility of digital exclusion issues is, paradoxically, all around us.  Today I’ve read the Independent Review of ICT User Skills by Baroness Estelle Morris (June 2009) which under the chapter ‘Who are the Digitally Excluded?’ says: An analysis of this data suggests the digitally excluded tend to be:

  • older 
  • socially excluded – often through unemployment, living in social  housing, having low incomes or being single parents. 7.2m (15% of the UK adult population) are both digitally excluded and socially excluded. 
  •  with few or no qualifications

No recognition of digital exclusion through impairment and the inadequate availability of the appropriate assistive technology.

Also today I’ve seen the BBC’s online article on training blind people to take photographs. Apart from my linguistic objection to labelling people through a sensory impairment, as though that was their sole defining feature, the BBC tells the story using video. Listening to it doesn’t give adequate descriptive information about the content of the images, or what is happening on the screen, and the captions (for people with hearing impairment) only tell you the name of the photographer. Needless to say, if you are using the low graphics version of the website there is no alternative text.

The exhibition Sights Unseen runs from 19 – 23 January at The Association of Photographers Gallery, 81 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4QS.

Sing Jerusalem naked!

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work

What difference would having the Internet have made to Feminist politics in the 1970s? In 2010, online feminist activity is encouraging libratory action; designed to creative a positive self image and sisterly solidarity. Make Your Own Herstory  is a website set up by self-confessed activist Nic Green, creator of Trilogy, feminist theatre involving naked female bodies that is allegedly so inspiring audiences have stripped naked for the final rendering of Jerusalem. I think that’s carrying audience participation a bit far but an alternative is proposed on the MYOH website were you are invited to take a camera outside, remove your clothes, sing Jerusalem and then upload the video.

Sounds like virtual feminism has arrived.

if you can’t pronounce it don’t eat it

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work

When the School Food Trust was set up in 2005, part of its remit was guidance on healthy packed lunches. Research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reports on the numbers of children’s packed lunches still based on crisps, sweets, and sugary drinks  saying only 1.1% meet the required nutritional standards and only 1 in 5 contain fresh fruit or veg. If a government strategy for addressing something as fundamental as the health of our children can fail then it doesn’t bode well for the Digital Britain Action Plan’s success in persuading non-computer users of the advantages of the Internet.  Government strategies are doomed when they suggest changes in lifestyle; stop smoking, restrict alcohol, eat five portions of fruit and veg, walk 10000 steps, while all the time there is an easy cheap supply of cigarettes, alcohol and high sugar/salt/fat processed foods, mostly well within 10000 steps.  

January is the time of broken new year resolutions; the majority of which involve giving something up. We pick the coldest, greyest and most miserable time of the year to promise ourselves we’ll be fitter and healthier in the months ahead. But it doesn’t happen; in the same way that sales of cigarettes and alcohol won’t go down so long as they provide the government with a healthy tax revenue and supermarkets continue to offer cut price deals. Habit is a powerful incentive. We choose behaviours that reward us in the short term so delayed gratification may not be the best way to sell an idea or a product, neither is depriving us of something we enjoy. A ‘healthy’ packed lunch is about more than food; it’s about the availability of cost and time, about education and understanding where processed food comes from and the number of additives and chemicals it contains. As a rule of thumb, if you can’t pronounce the ingredients list then reconsider eating it.

Supersize Me and the Future of Food are free to watch on freedocumentaries.org.   Fast Food Nation  and Food.inc tell much the same story. But warning; ‘healthy’ eating may well start here….

Deja vou

Sue Watling / / digital divide, digital literacy, equality and diversity, inclusive design

As part of the Digital Britain campaign,  Online Basics has been launched, designed to create confidence with using the Internet. Peter Mandelson  says:

Everyone should be a confident user of the internet if they are to participate fully in today’s digital society. Being online brings a range of personal benefits, including financial savings, educational attainment, improved salary prospects and independent living for older people.

Déjà vou! In the 1990s I worked in adult and community education when much the same things were being said about computers. I set up computer courses for the ‘terrified’ (no longer allowed under pc rules) and for teaching literacy and numeracy.  Our software was MS Works, Adobe Pagemaker and Paint and we had multimedia cd-roms. No Internet. You learned the basics about using a computer. Today, as a volunteer support worker, I’m frequently asked to visit a service user who is ‘really good with computers’ to find someone can send and receive emails through a learned sequence of steps; they have no holistic knowledge with which to troubleshoot and may have to wait days or even weeks for someone to sort out a problem.

How realistic is the expectation that you can learn to use the Internet effectively when you have never used a computer? Or is it merely like learning to use a library without really understanding the Dewey classification system (which I don’t). Maybe times are changing and I need to change with them.

But one thing remains the same; digital exclusion is still about access. It would take too much space to list all my criticisms of the site but I would suggest it was designed by an ME-user (Mouse and Eyes) and not tested with alternative users. Why isn’t this site a leading example of digital inclusion? Changing text size fails to alter the menu text, links are indicated with mouse-over and new windows open without warning. Aside from DDA requirements, the typos show a lack of proofreading and an exercise on searching has you keying in tesco.com with a further screen advertising Virgin Atlantic – mmm…neat piece of advertising.

Digital Britain is about digital inclusion and the reports make explicit the links between social and digital exclusions. But unless digital data is provided in formats that enable flexible delivery and content customisation, exclusion will continue across all social strata. We have the technology to enable access; what is needed now is to flip the coin and ensure that content is accessible too. Déjà vou again.

ignore this at your peril…

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work

Eight years ago, governments pledged to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Richard Black, BBC Environment correspondent, says it is clear that the pledge will not be met. Today the UN is launching the International Year of Biodiversity and promoting these messages.

  • humans are part of nature’s rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it.
  • biodiversity is essential for sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with vital services our lives depend on.
  • human activity is causing diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate; but we can prevent this loss
  • achievements to safeguard biodiversity have been made but we need to do much more and we must act urgently.

The parallels with climate change are clear; growing awareness and tokenistic calls for government action. We ignore the natural world at our peril. It’s arrogance to assume that the planet will continue to provide when we don’t understand the force that drives it and are unable to replicate its life or beauty. We should respect a power that lies beyond our control but unfortunately most people don’t seem to think this way. Their narrow mindedness will sooner rather than later enforce lifestyle-changing effects on us all.

What did the ‘F’ Word ever do for us?

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work

Its 40 years since the first National Women’s Liberation conference was held in the UK; since the language of the Female Eunuch and Sexual Politics and the media reveled in castigating  women as bra-burning, man-bashing dykes.

During WW2 women were given opportunities to support the war effort and take on traditional male roles,. Then they were relegated to the domestic sphere. Gender expectations swung from one extreme to the other. It’s no coincidence that female fashion in the 1950s promoted the forerunner of Barbie; nipped in waistlines and pushed out breasts. Feminism was a reaction to cultural repression, to the curtailing of women’s freedom to participate on an equal social and economic level with men. It tackled gender discriminations such as equal pay and employment opportunities. But the free love, free spirit ethos of the 1960’s overlooked one crucial issue; responsibility for childcare. At the end of the day, someone has to position themselves in the private sphere and tend the domestic hearth. To achieve equality took more than raising consciousness, it required a fundamental shift of the status of mother and housewife; accepting them as valued occupations in their own right. Instead, equal employment opportunities today often involve paying other women to take on the childcare and domestic commitments instead.

The legacy of feminism is increased gender controls. There is a clear cultural backlash through media induced social pressure to conform to an idealised female identity; one that defies nature and is impossible to achieve. Predominant images of women are airbrushed into thin perfection. It’s laudable to display a pre-pregnancy body within weeks of giving birth. The mantra ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ is supported by anorexia focused websites and the promotion of the size zero ‘celebrity’ as a role model. Pressure on young women to conform to a stereotyped image of femininity has never been greater nor the female body so diminished. Parallels with the onset of the feminist movement 40 years ago are striking suggesting that activism against body politics cannot be very far away.

learning in a single dimension

Sue Watling / / Uncategorized

Feedback on TMA1 is the first ‘real’ contact I’ve had with my OU tutor but I’ve no idea how others have done on this assignment. There is nothing with which to compare my own progress. I’m still experiencing the absence of a virtual dimension to my learning as a loss rather than a gain. I miss the sense of cohort with other students and without the motivation to log onto my learning area to see who has posted what on the discussion board, it’s much harder to coerce myself into picking up the book and engaging with the content. The paradox is online submission and electronic marking of assignments. I still need to word process my assessed work and log onto the OU site, where there is a module entitled D863 Identity in Question but with no content behind it. The value of this traditional distance unit is that it clearly demonstrates the benefits of a virtual learning environment. Isolated at home with my study materials is a single dimension experience. Previous units involving assessed online activities and contributions, not to mention the camaraderie and support of fellow students, added a multi dimensional aspect to learning which should never be underestimated.

Happy New Year 2010

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work

Welcome to 2010; the winter of the great freeze with yet more snow to come. The reality of climate change is challenged. While Britain shivers, recorded temperatures in other areas of the globe are said to be 5-10 degrees warmer than usual. Current debate centres round the difference between weather which is unpredictable and climate change which is a trend; they are two separate things.

It seems that every new online article reveals the value of the internet to incorporate public opinion. Comments remain the stars of the show. Their pertinent quotes and links to other resources are a continual source of relevant information. Along with an erudite mix of wit, humour and sheer ignorance, they offer a greater variety and interest than any one single journalist could ever achieve. Daily printed news sheets cannot hope to compete with this acerbic mix. One thing is for certain; analogue news can never be the same again.

Sixes and sevens and eights

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work

Quick, study your Christmas cards for snowflakes lest they be falsely represented. There are six sides to a snowflake; any more or less is heresy. Comments to this piece about Professor Thomas Koop,  specialist in ice crystal formation at the University of Bielefled, Germany, who is upset about the corruption of  snowflakes, include pretty flaky arguments, crystallising opinion, sixism in science and, my favourite so far, hell hath no flurry like a scientist scorned.   Internet journalism at its best!